What is Blu-Ray?

What is Blu-Ray?

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) used to store media and PC content.

BDA is a group of leading consumer electronics and PC companies. It has more than 180 members across world.

Its Board of Directors currently consist of:
Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, LG, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Sun Microsystem(Oracle), TDK, Thomson, Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney and Warner Bros

                                                  Logo of Blu-Ray Disc



 High-definition video may be stored on Blu-ray discs with up to 2160p resolution (3840×2160 pixels), at up to 60 frames per second. DVD discs had been limited to a maximum resolution of 480i (NTSC, 720×480 pixels) or 576i (PAL, 720×576 pixels).

Sony unveiled the first Blu-ray disc prototypes in October 2000, and the first prototype player was released in April 2003 in Japan.

Each Blu-ray disc is about 1.2 millimetres thick and 12 cm in diameter.
BLU-RAY has pits that are only 0.15 microns (µm) long. This is more than twice as small as the pits on a DVD.
Blu-ray has track pitch of 0.32 microns than 0.74 microns of DVD.

Discs store digitally encoded video and audio information in pits, spiral grooves that run from the centre of the disc to the edges.
A laser reads the other side of these pits -- the bumps.
Blu-ray uses a blue laser of shorter wavelength (405 nanometres) than a red laser (650 nanometres).

There are three Format of Blu-Ray is available: 

• BD-ROM - Read-only format for software, games and movie distribution.

• BD-R - Recordable format for HDTV recording and PC data storage.

• BD-RE - Rewritable format for HDTV recording and PC data storage.

 

Advantages of Blu-Ray:

• Record high-definition television (HDTV) without any quality loss.

• Instantly skip to any spot on the disc.

• Record one program while watching another on the disc.

• Create playlists.

• Automatically search for an empty space on the disc to avoid recording over a program.

• Blu-ray discs are better armed than current DVDs. They come equipped with a secure encryption system -- a unique ID that protects against video piracy and copyright infringement.

• Blu-ray has a higher data transfer rate -- 36 Mbps.

• Do not have the problems of  birefringence and disc tilt.